Not sure if this is the right place, but:
I am currently taking HTML pages that I have previously programmed with Macromedia Dreamweaver to pieces. I am then putting them back together again in Stylus Studio.
I guess this is the state of play in XML/XSL development, but it does seem a bit daft.
Does eXcelon have any plans to integrate closer with a WYSIWYG HTML Editor - or even a text-based editors, like UltraEdit?
Guy

What type of "closer integration" would you like to see? We do have plans
to provide WYSIWYG HTML functionality in Stylus Studio itself in a release
later this year, which would overlap somewhat with Dreamweaver et al.
However, the major difference is the audience for Dreamweaver and comparable
tools: they are targeted more at graphic artists and designers while Stylus
Studio is targeted at developers. Therefore, we will probably not approach
the level of sophistication that Dreamweaver provides in terms of page
layout, CSS support, and other design-oriented capabilities.

However, we do agree that there needs to be a model for working with such
products when using Stylus Studio. Any information you can give us on what
you would like to see specifically would be extremely helpful.

Not sure if this is the right place, but:
I am currently taking HTML pages that I have previously programmed with
Macromedia Dreamweaver to pieces. I am then putting them back together again
in Stylus Studio.
I guess this is the state of play in XML/XSL development, but it does seem a
bit daft.
Does eXcelon have any plans to integrate closer with a WYSIWYG HTML Editor -
or even a text-based editors, like UltraEdit?
Guy

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What I'm thinking in terms of, is something which allows me to write the HTML from within Stylus, instead of creating a page layout somewhere else and cutting it up again to make it dynamic.

>However, the major
>difference is the audience for
>Dreamweaver and comparable
>tools: they are targeted more at graphic
>artists and designers while
>Stylus Studio is targeted at
>developers. Therefore, we
>will probably not approach the
>level of sophistication that
>Dreamweaver provides in terms
>of page layout, CSS support,
>and other design-oriented capabilities.

DreamWeaver UltraDev is a first step towards making an HTML tool a tool for creating dynamic HTML. But it only does Java and ColdFusion. This is not, by all accounts, the real future: that lies squarely with XML/XSL processing.

I would agree that Stylus is aimed more at developers than designers - it's just a question of how long this remains a two-person job.

>However, we do agree that there needs to be
>a model for working with such products when
>using Stylus Studio. Any information you can give us on what you would like to see
>specifically would be extremely helpful.

A really neat integration could be achieved with a tool/component like XSpLit from www.percussion.com. This also uses source from Apache and does a fair job of converting HTML into XSL.

Something like this would speed up XSL production, as it means that the HTML must not be programmed by hand. It also means that were Stylus Studio, for example, to work with XSpLit, or components from Percussion, eXcelon Developers would not have to construct a fully-featured HTML Editor from scratch.

Writing HTML by hand is of course massively less time-consuming with the auto-complete feature of Stylus Studio, but clicking and dragging would be a real breakthrough.

In general, I have the feeling that people understand HTML far better than they do XSLT. That being the case, reaching out further into HTML territory is probably bringing XML/XSL processing closer to a lot more developers.

What I'm thinking in terms of, is something which allows me to write the
HTML from within Stylus, instead of creating a page layout somewhere else
and cutting it up again to make it dynamic.

* You'll get a lot of this in the forthcoming Stylus Studio support for
WYSIWYG HTML editing. We are looking at more developer-oriented tools like
DreamWeaver UltraDev to attempt to find an appropriate balance.

>However, the major
>difference is the audience for
>Dreamweaver and comparable
>tools: they are targeted more at graphic
>artists and designers while
>Stylus Studio is targeted at
>developers. Therefore, we
>will probably not approach the
>level of sophistication that
>Dreamweaver provides in terms
>of page layout, CSS support,
>and other design-oriented capabilities.

DreamWeaver UltraDev is a first step towards making an HTML tool a tool for
creating dynamic HTML. But it only does Java and ColdFusion. This is not, by
all accounts, the real future: that lies squarely with XML/XSL processing.

I would agree that Stylus is aimed more at developers than designers - it's
just a question of how long this remains a two-person job.

* Unless you turn the artists into engineers or the engineers into artists,
in most companies, it will remain a two person job. Creating the magic tool
that blends the best of both worlds is a challenge. Having used UltraDev, I
don't think it completely succeeds at this: it is still too heavy on the
design side, typical of Macromedia products. Our goal is to make developers
of XML-based applications successful. This means focus more on
programmer-oriented tools than designer-oriented tools, although I agree
there is need for a balance given that on smaller projects, the lines
between designer and developer get blurred or do not exist.

>However, we do agree that there needs to be
>a model for working with such products when
>using Stylus Studio. Any information you can give us on what you would
like to see
>specifically would be extremely helpful.

A really neat integration could be achieved with a tool/component like
XSpLit from www.percussion.com. This also uses source from Apache and does a
fair job of converting HTML into XSL.

Something like this would speed up XSL production, as it means that the HTML
must not be programmed by hand. It also means that were Stylus Studio, for
example, to work with XSpLit, or components from Percussion, eXcelon
Developers would not have to construct a fully-featured HTML Editor from
scratch.

Writing HTML by hand is of course massively less time-consuming with the
auto-complete feature of Stylus Studio, but clicking and dragging would be a
real breakthrough.

In general, I have the feeling that people understand HTML far better than
they do XSLT. That being the case, reaching out further into HTML territory
is probably bringing XML/XSL processing closer to a lot more developers.

* Stylus Studio's forthcoming WYSIWYG capabilities will address this. There
will, of course, be another beta program when these features are available
so you can give them a spin and give feedback ;->

HTH

Guy

* Thanks for the helpful feedback!

Chris

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The question of whether the designers become engineers or the engineers designers is a difficult one.
One indication is that over here in Germany at my local tech college they now run Bachelor course called Multimedia System Design. These students are training in design _and_ IT.
I'm not sure how if it's working or just giving a lot of people a headache =)
I'm also thinking back 5 years to when there were an awful lot of IT people churning out HTML. Thanks to competition to provide robust, comfortable tools, a lot of this work is now done directly by designers.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to the next version of Stylus Studio already...